Settlement reached in Suffolk, North Star case

A settlement has been reached between Suffolk County and the contractor who challenged the county’s 2006 law that forced contractors that do work for the county prove their workers’ immigration status.

Last week, North Star Concrete and Suffolk County reached a settlement that eliminated the county’s violation against North Star, which had been accused of hiring illegal immigrants.

The county originally fined North Star $18,000, then lowered the fine to $2,000.

According to the settlement, North Star will pay the county the $2,000 but it will not be considered a fine. Also, the law will remain on the books, North Star’s attorney Robert LaReddola said.

“There is no fine, no risk for North Star,” LaReddola said. “It’s nothing. It’s not even a blemish on their record. North Star considers this a win.”

Dan Aug, spokesman for Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, confirmed the settlement. He said North Star is still eligible to bid on all county projects.

LaReddola said even though the law remains on the books, he doubts that Suffolk County will ever enforce it again. The county implemented the law in 2006, forcing contractors working for the county to pledge they didn’t have any illegal workers.

“They had not enforced their law on anybody but us for the past two years,” he said.

County Executive Steve Levy said that’s not true.

Since the law came into effect in October 2006, 144 county vendors have been checked, Levy said.

Of those, 97 were in compliance and 47 were not. Of the 47, the county followed up with 38 that were able to locate the proper documentation.

That leaves nine contractors who are in violation. Of those, seven have already paid fines ranging from $1,000 to $2,000 on the violations and two are still in negotiations with the county, Levy said.

The vendors fined were not able to produe the required identification as defined by the law and the difference in amounts of the fines were determined by the number of employees who were undocumented.

“It is not our goal to find X number of violators,” Levy said. “If we find no violations, that’s something to celebrate.”

He added the reason why there have been so few violations is that the law only deals with businesses who contract with the county.

“You would think those entities would be more careful about who’s working on government jobs than other private entities,” Levy said. “This is to be expected. This is a company working for the government. They are going to have to anticipate some oversight.”

LaReddola said North Star fought the county instead of paying the initial fine because it hired workers who they thought had proper paperwork from a union.

Aug said the settlement states that the company only conducted a record-keeping violation.

In addition, LaReddola argued that the county’s law was more strict that federal regulations and even if North Star lost its case against the county in state court, it would have still pursued a federal case to get the law repealed.

That’s not going to happen now, LaReddola said.

“We took this case on a contingency because we felt we couldn’t lose,” he said. “We didn’t see how we could lose.”

But Latino advocate the Rev. Allan Ramirez said he would still like the law off the books.

He said the fact the law remains continues to give Suffolk County a black eye, especially in the wake of the November murder of Ecuadorean immigrant Marcelo Lucero in Patchogue.

“The fact that are settling at this level shows you they are hopefully rethinking their attitude and hostility toward the immigrant community and by extension, the business community,” Ramirez said. “What I wish would happen is they would drop this law No. 1 and No. 2 apologize to both the business community and the immigrant community.”